Walking the Labyrinth Portable pathway in the Chapel offers a tool for prayer


While FPCA’s Lenten small groups discuss a book about walking a pilgrimage trail in northern Spain, members and friends can take part in a centuries-old tradition that deeply symbolizes the spiritual journey: walking a labyrinth.


A portable labyrinth that was gifted to FPCA by one of our church groups is available in the chapel from Sunday afternoons through Saturday afternoons every week during the season of Lent.


Labyrinths were used during the Middle Ages as a form of pilgrimage for Christians unable to go to the Holy Land or walk a trail like the Camino de Santiago, which author Joyce Rupp describes in Walk in a Relaxed Manner (Orbis Books, 2005), the focus of the church’s Lenten small group study. Walking a labyrinth is a tool for prayer and meditation that quiets the mind so we can focus more clearly on God. Tough the path winds, there is no confusion as to where it leads.


Walking the labyrinth lends itself to many forms of prayer, and each experience is different. You may walk as a way of letting go of cares and worries or hold up a concern or personal issue. You can pray with petitions, thanksgiving, praise, intercessions, a mantra, or simply openness to what God is saying to you. You may linger at the end point or retrace your steps. Tere is no right or wrong way to do it.


Some suggestions that may enrich your experience: Take off your shoes and feel the ground beneath your feet.


A labyrinth is a spiraling, single-path walkway that slowly winds from the outside of a circle toward the center. It’s not a maze: Tere is one entry, one finish point, and one path. Te path has many twists and turns, each one changing the view along the way. But there are no dead ends or wrong turns.


Sit and relax before starting, perhaps sitting in silence or reading a Bible passage. Focus on your breathing and be fully present. Maintain silence for your own reflection, walk slowly, and be respectful of others who may be on the path. Consider asking a question that you have been asking yourself or God. When you reach the center, you can walk directly out of the labyrinth or follow it back to the start. Feel free to use chairs outside the circle to rest, pray, reflect, or write.


FPCA’s labyrinth is modeled after a design laid into the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France and is printed in blue on an 18-by-18-foot sheet of poly canvas. If you find walking the labyrinth meaningful and would like the church to continue making the labyrinth available after Lent, feel free to let the church office know at office@fpcallentown.org.


“Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.”


—PSALM 25:4 5


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